Bitcoin Forum

I've decided that I simply can't continue to mine and make money.

Simply put, over the past year I've found my costs & risks (especially for hardware) constantly increasing, while my profits have been dwindling.

Originally with GPU I wasn't earning much, but I didn't have to invest, and it was really low-risk low-stress. Then, I bought my first ASICs, but it took forever to ship. Then when it shipped it hashed well for like 2 days (Believe it or not I "accidentally" solo-mined a block). But after that, even when I joined a pool, it wasn't working very well. I suspect I just got very lucky. Long story short I had to re-sell my miner and immediately bought a newer one. This time, I was on the first wave, but it was even worse. I only broke even because I re-sold my miner, today.

I'd rather not disclose the company who made my miners, because I hold no ill will toward them and don't wish to spread bad publicity, but I'm wondering if anybody could either agree with me that its probably best to just quit while I'm ahead, because I'm really lucky to even broke even on this last one and could have lost a ton, or if its best to go right ahead and buy a terraminer IV. If I did the latter, I'd be investing an amount more than equal to my total miner profits ever (given BTC price at time of mining) in a SINGLE machine. Now, its not quite as bad as that, as the majority of coins I got at really low prices, but I'm starting to think its best to just cut and run, or invest in BTC by just purchasing more, rather than buying increasingly expensive equipment.

A 550GH KnC Jupiter only makes 1 btc per day right now at a diff of 270, so you made the right choice.  A HashFast makes less than 1 btc if they launched right now, and they still haven't.  A 2TH CoinTerra and Bitmine will probably make about that much by the time they launch in December/January while Jupiters and HashFast's will earn 0.25 btc at that time.  The Miner Protection by HashFast in 2014 doesn't come until their 400% increase will only make them about the same.

Asking for refunds and buying btc direct is what most sane people should do.

KNC Jupiter will work stable at 500 GH/s, I saw many ppl using extra devices to cool down the miner only to gain < 50GH/s.
I suspect the same problem (the heat) will become common for all ASIC producers.

Thats a good choice, when more and more people quit mining there is when I start :P

1 BTC per day isn't that bad, believe it or not after that one block I solo-mined I haven't even been able to keep up 1 BTC/day. I suppose it all depends on Bitcoin's price at the time. Still, just to break even at $6k for a miner, even if the price per coin were to go all the way up to $300 by that point, I'd have to mine like 20 coins, not even counting for electricity. That means even a couple days late on shipping could screw me royally.

Yea, I think I'm going to have to sit this next round out. If BTC bubbles to $1000, then maybe I'll hop back in. Till then, it seems like a waste of time.

Keep your profits tight.

Wild difficulty increases, so mining is not a sane option, and also problems with securities everywhere, so even investing is too risky.
Keep them for now, invest up to 1/3 of them when the market is safer.

Better to Buy and hold Bitcoin for a year or more....

I would have made so much more money if I would have simply bought bitcoin with the money I spent on mining equipment.

so true

Will difficulty ever stop increasing? In the near future?

Somebody recommended that I buy Difficulty Futures at ICBIT.se. Given that I have a lot of BTC to invest, and currently not doing much with any of it, do you think those would be viable?

It will, when the cost to manufacturer ASIC is higher then the selling price. Should be mid of next year maybe?

I'm out of the "Spend Mined Bitcoins to Buy More Bitcoin Miners" game. Will probably spend some fiat in December or January to acquire whatever mining hardware looks most reasonable by then.

Thats what im planing to do too..

A lot of bitcoin you say?  You should consider Cex.io (https://cex.io/r/1/frankenmint/0/).  They will be able to give you hashpower to use on the spot for bitcoin mining.  As long as you follow it closely and keep your mining power in sell orders at a gain, you will always see mining income on top of gains from the spread...just make sure to pay attention to the market as if you start to ignore it, it may drop in value and you will face a net loss.  However I did pay attention to it and was able to make 2 almost 3x my money because I was able to mine with accumulated bitcoins then resell them back out...not like physical hardware where you have to list your items for sale and hope that someone buys them with the selling house taking in auction fees or seller fees.

!

it was nice when 5830's paid for themselves in two days

+1 

Really? when was that?

So, if I understand this right, its basically a cloudhashing-type scheme, only with the contracts being always tradable? That has some promise. What does the liquidity look like?

Yes.
Doubt it.

Thats pretty bad strategy indeed, especially these days.
But next year there might be quite fast miners, cheap and effecient. At least I hope ASIC competetion works

I, too WAS about to quit mining when I saw the difficult was increasing rapidly around June of 2013 but then I remember Litecoin :D back in business baby. I still mine bitcoin with my very small ASIC farm and getting some BFL miners soon but my hope is more on Litecoin more than Bitcoin. My plans when I receive the BFL Miners is mine as much as I can before the hardware is losing just from being on then hold the Bitcoins.

And yes I was bitcoin mining with GPUs from January to June of 2013.

Switch over to mining Peercoin (PPC).
In 5 days, when the difficulty adjusts, it will probably be more profitable than mining Bitcoin.

PPC is the 3rd largest altcoin and is SHA-256 like BTC so you can mine it just like BTC.

i felt that way too.  :o I gave up buying rigs and went with

www.seolvit.wix.com/seolvit and their CEX model.  I compound when the GH/s price is low, and cash out when it is high,
More possibilities without the hassles.

Explain. Because that's not in the slightest bit believable.

My jalapeno hit a 140M in 3 days of operation while the difficulty was 20M

then I sold the jalapeno for 2700$ because mining is a joke.

You could link the block you mined.
And, if you have already spent the coinbase, you could also reveal the private key, so that you could prove it was really your block.

No, it will stop increasing when the profit returned by the most efficient miner no longer covers it's electricity cost. We could hit 30 billion+ before that happens though.

He doesn't have to reveal the private key. He could just sign a message with it proving that it is him.

I' m considering sticking my miners in random altcoins (obviously only the ones with no premine), and just selling them when they hit a halfway decent price.

This is true, but sad.  I had/have fun doing this.  It just does not pay anymore.

Who is going to ever buy those random alt coins though?

+1

altcoins are currently useless.

namecoin could have made sense but its design had fatal flaws, and ppcoin is only partly proof-of-stake so it doesn't really matter.
the others are crappy clones with exactly zero value.

Not all altcoins are useless, scrypt altcoins might be good...

why

+1

There is no alt coin that offers anything better that what bitcoin already offers.

Scrypt coins are  only interesting for people who want to mine without investing in an asic. So they are only interesting to miners wanting to make a quick buck. If they actually became popular, someone would make an asic for them and they'd be the same as bitcoin.

You are right, people already making ASIC for scrypt coins already..

I quit the mining game myself last Month. Was all just too expensive and sold all but one of my block erupters for nostalgia's sake. Plus they ain't worth poop anymore :-P
Nice to see the. Itcoin price has almost doubled since I last saw though!

from around the middle of may 2011 til the end of june (more like the middle of june, because difficulty started increasing a ton)


oh, you also got shogun with your 5830s!

Im jealous, I would buy like 1000000 GPU...

Your best bet of making money mining is to get the first batch, mine for a week, and sell before next difficulty bump. That's one way and it's risky sure. The margins aren't that great either.

The next step is to buy reels and get boards built. But then you will be stuck with a bunch of gear. Hopefully you can sell that in tine too. There is a bigger reward with this but comes with more risk. 

Honestly I say you gamble your money on BTC.

Your gains will be significantly higher than anyone in the hardware business. Assuming you have a nice capital pool.

Just think about it. If you had spent $50K on BTC instead of pre-ordering a bunch of miners, by the time you get those miners your money will have grown 10-20%.

I say you let the fools take the biggest risk and let them do the work of mining and getting the hardware together and all that. That to you means growth in BTC. And if you keep on collecting those coins, your value will just go up.

I'm actively converting 50% of my income into BTC. Every month. Has been working out great. Especially in October.

Don't waste your time on hardware.

Buying BTC is good advice if BTC doesn't tank to 5% of its value like it did over the course of 2011-2012.

Everyone here is really excited by the prospect of buying BTC because the price has gone up lately, and seem to be amnesic about when it spent forever tanking.  But the same thing goes for any commodities market, the traders are often bipolar and impulsive.

I'll stop mining when mining stops being profitable -- but so far over the past 3 years of mining and saving half and spending the rest on more miners, I've been making a killing.  The crazy thing about mining is that it's still profitable even when BTC/LTC is imploding.

The people who think that bitcoin's rise in price will continually destroy other equities and commodities markets month over month and year over year are probably the ones who will be in for the biggest shocks in the future.

Dont buy anything or any other miner difficulty is crazy. Invest your money into BTC when on low price and it is a sure profit

And invest some in alt-coins too to diversify your risk...

Diversification "no matter what" is clearly a bad idea: the asset you invest in must make sense in the first place anyway...

Mining can be bad for the people who don't pay what it is worth. If you find a good deal it is easy to make money off mining. Some people have no problem STILL paying 43 BTC for a Jupiter. Ridiculous. Never ROI. Others, get off with deals like $4000 for a Jupiter (Me). That turns out well.

Hope this helped.